The Starter

by Scott Sigler

  “You do not sleep with a gangster’s concubine. John’s brother played with fire. Now, he will pay the price. I will not have his idiocy damaging the players on my team.”

  “John is going to Madderch with or without your permission, Coach. I can’t let him go alone.”

  “Barnes! Do not take John Tweedy to Orbital Station One. If you do, Gredok will rip your head right off your narrow, Human neck.”

  Quentin closed his eyes, tried to work through the possibilities. If Gredok was in Ionath City, he was a twenty-, maybe thirty-minute trip up to the Touchback. Would Gredok come after them? If Quentin were the owner, would he?

  Yes. He would. An owner could not let five of his starting players get themselves killed. Quentin wasn’t just a rescuer, he was also bait.

  “Coach, we’re going. If Gredok backs our play, we’ll win. If he doesn’t... well, it’s truly been an honor to play football for you.”

  “Barnes! Don’t you—”

  Quentin broke the connection and walked back into the salon.

  “Well?” John said. “Is Gredok going to follow us in?”

  “Absolutely. He has to. We’re going, right now. Anyone wants out, take the yacht’s shuttle and go to the Touchback. Our teammate needs us, so who is in?”

  Mum-O-Killowe let out a horrid war cry and waved his upper arms. Sho-Do-Thikit snapped out an arm and flicked Mum-O in the vocal tubes. Mum-O yelped, then fell silent. Sho-Do then banged his upper right hand against his chest. The exchange told Quentin that the two Ki were in, but that Mum-O had spoken out of turn — Sho-Do-Thikit was the alpha, and wasn’t about to let the juvenile defensive tackle forget it.

  Quentin looked at Choto. “You’re from OS1, Choto. We need you. Are you in?”

  “I am tasked with protecting you,” Choto said. “So if you are going, I have no choice.”

  That left only Becca. “Montagne, you want out? Then leave.”

  She chewed her lower lip, glaring at him. “You’re a bastard, Barnes. We’re one-and-four, you’re heading into a dangerous situation, and you’re taking our two starting linebackers, our left tackle, and our star defensive lineman.”

  Mum-O-Killowe let out a little bark.

  “Don’t mention it,” Rebecca said. “Quentin, If this goes wrong, if anything happens, the Krakens are heading back to Tier Two for sure. Not even Yassoud would bet against that no matter what odds you gave him.”

  She was right and he knew it, but there was a bigger game afoot. They might get hurt, get killed, but he believed with utter conviction that if they didn’t sign Ju Tweedy the Krakens were headed for relegation regardless.

  “Everyone here knows the risks,” Quentin said. “They also know the reward. The situation isn’t black and white, so make your call.”

  She glared at him with pure hate. He stared back. The battle of wills lasted only a few seconds before she looked down and away.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll go.”

  He nodded at Frederico. “Take us to Orbital Station One.”

  • • •

  QUENTIN MANAGED to not throw up during the punch-in, an amazing feat considering that the smell of candied shushuliks still filled the salon. Three hours until punch-out into normal space: time enough to plan.

  “Choto,” Quentin said. “Madderch is your stomping grounds. What do we do?”

  “The city has fifty million people,” Choto said. “Unless John knows where his brother might be, we don’t have a chance.”

  John rubbed his hands. His face tat spelled out gibberish. “A couple of seasons ago, I visited Madderch and went out drinking with Ju and his teammate Shi-Ki-Kill. We went for Chinese food. A couple of rowdies tried to rob the restaurant. Ju and I beat the crap out of them, rousted them out. No cops, no reports, no nothing. The owner said if we ever needed a favor we could ask him for anything. If Ju is still on-planet, that’s where he’ll hide.”

  “Chinese food,” Choto said. “You remember the name of the place?”

  John nodded. “Chucky Chong’s League-Style House of Chow.”

  “I know that restaurant,” Choto said. “Excellent moo goo gai pan. But there is a problem. Chucky Chong’s is two miles from the shaft opening.”

  “Two miles?” Quentin said. “That’s nothing, we could grab a cab, even jog it in like twenty minutes.”

  “No,” Choto said. “Your face is too famous, Quentin. And you as well, John. People may recognize you. If word gets out, the police or Anna’s people will follow you right to Ju. I am a native son of Madderch, and as such, I am also too well-known. There will be a sentient-hunt for Ju, so police will be all over the streets.”

  “We split up?”

  John shook his head. “Unless my brother sees me, he won’t go with anyone.”

  Quentin didn’t have to know Ju to see the logic in that. Were he in Ju’s shoes, there were only a few people he would trust. “Then we all go together. Choto, can you make some calls when we come out of punch-space? There’s got to be some way we can travel those two miles without being seen.”

  They waited as Choto considered this.

  “I don’t know anyone directly,” he said finally. “I won’t have my family move us around, it is too risky — sorry John.”

  John nodded. “I understand.”

  “I haven’t lived in Madderch for years,” Choto said. “But my family has connections in the sanitation department. I will try to set something up. But whatever we do, success, if not our lives, will depend on Gredok arriving soon after us to sign Ju. He will come?”

  Quentin nodded. “Yes, Gredok is coming. Trust me.”

  His teammates seemed somewhat relieved by this. They all trusted him. All but Rebecca Montagne. She stared at Quentin, anger and doubt in her eyes.

  He just hoped that his plan would work and he could prove her wrong.

  • • •

  SITTING ALONE IN HIS STATEROOM, Quentin felt the reality wave break over the Hypatia, felt himself spreading, separating. Then almost as soon it started, it was over. He managed to keep down the snack he’d had during the short flight. Maybe he was finally getting used to space travel. That, or the fear of what he was doing far outweighed his fear of punch-space. Having one crime lord unhappy with him was bad enough. He was about to make it two. And that was the best-case scenario. The worst? He wouldn’t make it off Orbital Station One alive.

  He slowly breathed away the stress of the flight, then walked out of his state room and into the salon. His passengers waited for him: Rebecca Montagne, Mum-O-Killowe, Sho-Do-Thikit, John Tweedy, and Choto the Bright.

  Choto worked a palm-up display, pedipalp fingers touching and moving glowing icons. A message scrolled through the air, but Quentin didn’t know how to read Quyth.

  “Choto, what’s the word?”

  “We have transport,” Choto said. “This is very short notice, Quentin, but my brother knows an OS1 native who can get us to Chucky Chong’s.”

  “A Quyth Warrior? A Worker?”

  “Human,” Choto said. “The Concordia accepts all citizens.”

  Quentin nodded. He found it hard to remember that the other governments weren’t like the Purist Nation, and that in most systems all species were welcome. Orbital Station One had native Human residents that could trace their roots back some two centuries, to ancestors who had emigrated from the Planetary Union, the League of Planets, or even the Purist Nation.

  Choto closed his left pedipalp hand. The holo-palm blinked out. He turned to look out a view port window to Orbital Station One, the place of his birth. “Once this yacht moors to the shaft wall, we must all fit into the lifeboat. My contact will pick us up there. What we will do is dangerous. But to rescue John’s brother, there is no other way I can think of. Quentin, are you sure that Gredok will come after us?”

  “Absolutely,” Quentin said, although he still had no idea. “He’s got our back, Choto. You know it.”

  Quentin looked out the view port at the massive construct. Or
bital Station One, or “The Ace,” as it was frequently called. The planetoid was completely artificial, built over centuries by the Quyth as an outlet for the excess population of their homeworld. Quentin had been here once before, during the Tier Two season. The pointy sphere reminded him of a massive medieval mace, a rock studded with blue, metallic points.

  The “points” were actually crystalline spires probably two miles high, a mile thick at their base. They reflected a dull, metallic-blue color, their surfaces worn and pitted from space dust and debris. They were projections of the silica-based lifeform that made up the planet’s ever-expanding framework. Centuries of terraforming had brought in countless asteroids, gradually building up mass. That same crystalline material made up most of the buildings, city streets, even the sprawling football stadium known as the Black Hole by the locals, and The Ace Hole by Human detractors throughout the rest of the Concordia.

  Frederico flew the Hypatia straight toward a unique spire. Unlike the thousands of points that angled to a weathered tip, this one extended about a mile up from the uneven surface before ending in a two-mile-wide circular opening. This entrance led through the crust of OS1 and into Madderch, The Ace’s main city center.

  Frederico’s voice came over the yacht’s speakerfilm. “So far, so good. I’m sure Villani will have cops check registrations for incoming ships to see if any GFL players or staff are coming in, but I think they’ll focus on flight plans filed after Ju got cut. We might escape notice long enough to get you all off the yacht.”

  “Might?” Becca said. “Well, that’s comforting.”

  The players rode in silence as the Hypatia slid through the void toward the opening’s edge. Quentin watched the changing view, mesmerized by the scale of what he saw. Starships, some twenty times the size of the Hypatia, noiselessly moved in and out of the two-mile wide shaft.

  The Hypatia slid over the shaft, bottom parallel to OS1’s surface, then descended belly-first. Long rows of lights ran down the inside of the shaft, each light far larger than the yacht itself, a line of illumination reaching down and down to the buried civilization far below. Like the last time he’d been here, the long strings of lights reminded Quentin of the mines on Micovi, the mines he’d worked before a gangster discovered that he had a million-credit arm.

  The Hypatia descended the shaft, the big ship suddenly small in the presence of the miles-long traverse. Bluish projections jutted forth from the walls, the same bluish material that made up the spires and most of OS1’s framework. Thousands of small interstellar-capable ships were moored to these projections, running the gamut of sizes from small trucks, cargo tugs, and yachts up to massive haulers far larger than the Touchback, and something that made Quentin nervous — warships.

  The Purist Nation had no warships, at least none that he’d ever seen. Creterakians restricted the navies of all the conquered systems. The Quyth Concordia, however, was not a conquered system, and as an independent, had one of the galaxy’s largest fleets.

  The moored ships did not move, but the spires themselves showed countless spots of activity. Yellow, bug-like machines crawled the walls, along the piers, around the docked ships. The machines trimmed and repaired the always-growing blue silicate, keeping the semi-organic surface tidy, clean, and ready for commerce. It was hard to focus on just one of the machines — they moved about in such numbers it was like trying to see an individual ant amidst a swarming ant hill.

  The Hypatia slowed, then shuddered as it moored to some long, unseen blue spike.

  They had arrived.

  “You better move fast,” Frederico called out on the sound system. “I just got a notice from customs officials. We were tapped for a random inspection.”

  “Okay team,” Quentin said. “To the lifeboat. Let’s go.”

  • • •

  AS A FOOTBALL PLAYER, Quentin Barnes had gotten up-close and personal with all the races: Human, HeavyG, Ki, Quyth Warrior, and Sklorno. The hitting, blocking and tackling usually involved physical contact with just one or two other beings. Fumble–recovery pileups, however, created a mass of twisted bodies all jammed together so tightly that the players on the bottom couldn’t move until the whistle blew and the pile slowly broke apart.

  A pileup like that seemed roomy compared to the lifeboat and the packed mass of sentients crammed inside. Quentin had somehow wound up against the inner hull — he felt metal grate pushing into his right cheek, the bony carapace of Choto’s elbow pressing into his left. Rebecca Montagne’s muscular body was pressed into his back, someone was damn near cutting off the circulation in his legs, and — worst of all — a Ki arm or leg was mashed right up against his lips. It wasn’t racist to say that the Ki stank (because they did, and bad). Now Quentin had first-hand knowledge that they tasted even worse.

  Lifeboats were made for four normal-sized sentients or three GFL-sized ones. In this lifeboat, they had managed to pack in two Humans, a HeavyG woman, a Quyth Warrior and two Ki.

  “Hey, Wrecka,” John said. “Get your foot off my knee, will ya?”

  “I can’t move,” Rebecca said. “And I don’t think that’s me on your leg.”

  “Well, someone’s foot is on my knee,” John said. “Hey, who’s foot is on my knee?”

  Quentin managed to bend his leg a little, then give a short stomp.

  “Hey!” John said.

  “It’s my foot,” Quentin said. “Mystery solved, Uncle Johnny, now shut up and deal with it like the rest of us.”

  The only advantage to Quentin’s mashed-up posture was that his right eye was almost on top of an exterior monitor. His left hand was smashed against his chest, but he could wiggle his fingers enough to work the monitor’s controls.

  Speakerfilm inside the lifeboat emitted Frederico’s voice, somewhat muffled by the two thousand pounds of tightly packed footballers.

  “This is your captain speaking,” Frederico’s said. “I believe your local guide is en route.”

  Quentin looked at the monitor and saw what Frederico was talking about. A spiderish machine the size of an air-tank scuttled along the underside of the blue spire, moving with a jerky precision. Hooked feet dug into the slick, jewel-like surface, letting the machine practically sprint down the length. The gravity here was just a hair under standard, which meant that if the maintenance machine fell — unless it had anti-grav (and it didn’t look big enough for that) — it would plummet two miles straight down the shaft to the city of Madderch below.

  “Uh, Choto?” Quentin said as the machine rushed closer, filling up the tiny screen. “I don’t know about this...”

  “It is the only way,” Choto said. “And John, your feet smell like the rear-end of a giant greten fish.”

  “Hey!” John said. “You leave my feet out of this.”

  “If only I could,” Choto said.

  “Choto, seriously,” Quentin said. The yellow crawler moved faster and faster, closing in. The pier shook just a little with each spidery step. “This is a bad idea.”

  “Just hold on,” Choto said. “The ride is about to get bumpy. Quentin, please release the locks.”

  Quentin moved his left hand and hit a button, releasing the locks holding the lifeboat firmly in place. He then switched the view, letting him see it from a camera farther up the Hypatia’s side.

  As soon as he did, he wished he hadn’t.

  The yellow spider-machine reached one long arm into the lifeboat hold. The lifeboat rattled, then lurched. Quentin started to say something, and just as he did the whole lifeboat turned and the Ki arm (or leg) that had been just on his lips now slid into his mouth and pressed down on his tongue.

  Oh High One, why would you ever create anything that tastes as bad as this?

  Quentin bit down hard. He heard Mum-O-Killowe roar, then felt the limb yank out of his mouth. He clamped his jaws shut, hoping he would never experience something like that again as long as he lived.

  There was no room for them to be thrown around by the spider-machine’s rough han
dling, but their weight shifted and turned and pressed them against each other. On the screen, Quentin saw the machine arm pull the lifeboat out of the Hypatia, then bend the arm and press the lifeboat against its back. The spider-thing turned in place and scurried down the protrusion.

  As he lurched helplessly from side to side, Quentin switched camera angles again. The next view must have come from the top of the lifeboat, because he wasn’t staring at the protrusion or the spider-machine — he was looking straight down the seemingly bottomless, hollow spire. His stomach roiled. The view, combined with the pure-evil taste of the Ki limb, made him fight to stop from puking up that snack he’d so expertly held down after the punch-out.

  The spider-machine moved fast toward the shaft wall, angled for a crack in the rocky blue material, and crawled right inside. A sudden lurch and grinding sound told Quentin the lifeboat had smashed into something, probably the side wall. His brand-new lifeboat from his brand-new yacht, now undoubtedly all scratched and dented. And oh, great — the static on the small screen told him the camera had probably been torn away. He could see nothing more, and really had no idea where the driver was taking them. If there even was a driver at all.

  The Krakens players jostled heavily against each other for another few minutes, thrown this way and that but mostly down as the machine seemed to head for the city below.

  Then a final lurch, a gong, and the lifeboat moved no more.

  “Quentin,” Choto said. “Open it up, please.”

  “Please,” Rebecca said. “John’s feet, oh my God, please get the door open.”

  “Hey!” John said.

  Quentin was now inverted at a forty-five degree angle, head lower than his feet. He had to squirm a little, but he reached out and found the button to open the lifeboat.

  The six teammates half-fell, half-crawled out. Quentin had a cramp in his right leg and he wanted very badly to brush his teeth, get that rancid dead-sparrow taste of Ki out of his mouth.

  Quentin stood and stretched as he looked around. They were in a small cavern, lit by glowing balls of various sizes that jutted partially out from the blue, translucent ceiling. The light illuminated cracks and veins of varying density. A second spider-machine crouched nearby, the back end of its left side taken off, parts spread all over the translucent blue ground. Racks of tools and other equipment ringed the parts.